Trying to shame Israeli troops, a woman holds up her baby in front of the soldiers waiting to evict her and other Jewish settlers Wednesday from theirhomes in Neve Dekalim in the southern Gaza Strip. The evacuation will end Israels 38-year occupation of Gaza.

A Jewish settler prays on a Mediterranean beach Wednesday in the settlement of Shirat Hayam in the southern Gaza Strip.

Israeli police drag a Jewish settler onto a bus Wednesday in the settlement of NeveDekalim in the southern Gaza Strip. Troops dragged sobbing settlers out of homes,synagogues and even a nursery school Wednesday in the massive Gaza pullout.

Neve Dekalim, Gaza Strip – Buses bearing hundreds of weeping Jewish settlers rolled out of the Gaza Strip on Wednesday after Israeli troops evicted residents from homes, schools and synagogues in a chaotic and harrowing operation to end 38 years of occupation.

By the end of the day, the army said almost half of the 21 settlements were vacant or nearly empty and that the rest were likely to follow within days.

But the atmosphere surrounding the withdrawal, Israel’s first ever from established communities on land Palestinians want for their future state, was volatile.

A settler in the West Bank grabbed a gun from a guard and fired on Palestinian workers, killing four and wounding one other in what Prime Minister Ariel Sharon described as an act of “Jewish terror” aimed at stopping the withdrawal.

Another West Bank settler was critically injured when she set herself on fire to protest the pullout. And the Israeli military said it had foiled a plot by the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad to bomb Gush Katif, the main Gaza settlement bloc.

The tumult began before daybreak when thousands of troops, unarmed but accompanied by armored bulldozers, moved into the settlements hours after the deadline for residents to leave on their own expired.

Some settlers and their supporters climbed quietly aboard the buses, hugging the soldiers goodbye. Others, though, screamed abuse at troops or likened themselves to victims of the Holocaust.

When forces arrived at a home in Kerem Atzmona, one family sent five wailing children outside with their hands raised in the air, each wearing a yellow Star of David pinned to his or her chest.

Teenage girls in another settlement lifted their voices in a song best known in Israel as an anthem sung by some Jews on their way to the Nazi gas chambers.

Israel sent in 14,000 soldiers and police officers to handle the evictions – more than triple the number of residents who were thought to have stayed past the deadline.

The settler ranks were augmented, however, by up to 5,000 protesters who came from outside Gaza to support the settlers and impede the withdrawal.

Many of the outsiders appeared to be spoiling for a fight. One fretted in frustration when troops bypassed Shirat Hayam, the settlement where he and several hundred other demonstrators were camping out.

“I feel bad because I’m sitting here doing nothing when I could be part of the real battle,” said 23-year-old Gadi Rosenberg, a student from a West Bank settlement.

That attitude alarmed some of the Gaza settlers, who said they wanted to offer passive resistance but had no wish for clashes with troops.

“Many of the ‘guests’ hold views much more extreme than ours,” said Yosef Elnekaveh, the rabbi in Neve Dekalim, the largest Gaza settlement and a center of resistance. “We can’t control these people, but we need to get off this collision course.”

Throughout the day, many Israeli troops, even the youngest of them, remained stoic in the face of relentless taunts and insults.

“Who gave you a uniform?” protesters shouted at one soldier. They yelled at a young female officer: “What kind of mother will you make?”

Sharon urged settlers and their supporters to refrain from taking out their anger on soldiers. “Do not attack the army and the police; do not accuse them, blame them, hurt them, insult them, criticize them,” the prime minister said. “Blame me, hurt me. I am responsible. It is my decision.”

Israel captured the Gaza Strip in the 1967 war, and over the years nearly 9,000 Jewish settlers had come to live in the territory, residing in heavily guarded enclaves surrounded by more than 1.3 million Palestinians. While Sharon had long championed the settler movement, he eventually became convinced that it was untenable for Israel to maintain a hold on Gaza and ordered the pullout.

There was no serious violence in the Gaza Strip in the course of Wednesday’s evacuation, though fisticuffs were common and emotions ran high. Even settlers who offered no physical resistance vowed to make it as psychologically difficult as possible for troops to evict them.

“This house is a living, breathing house,” a woman named Moriah told Israeli television as she waited for soldiers to knock on her door in the settlement of Morag. “We are making breakfast, preparing lunch. I have laundry in the machine. They will have to turn off the stove themselves.”

Among the most delicate operations were those to clear synagogues where people were praying inside. One young man in an orange T-shirt – the color adopted by the anti-withdrawal movement – was carried out of the synagogue in Morag with the straps of phylacteries, small leather boxes worn during prayer, still wrapped around his arm.

The eviction effort centered on Neve Dekalim. As night fell, up to 1,000 people remained holed up in its main synagogue.

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